“There is more there, so much more, but it is unclear. I see you struggling to survive in the nether regions of hell, your body, full of poison, and your heart, full of fear. But why or how, I cannot see.”
“What about me?” Gerard blurted out, in an angry sounding and commanding tone.
A long silence ensued. Hyden couldn’t imagine mourning the death of someone that despised him, and he couldn’t fathom leading a king anywhere. Nor could he see himself watching helplessly as someone tried to kill Gerard. It all seemed so far-fetched, that he didn’t even want to consider it. He would’ve dismissed it all as nonsense, had the crone not spoken of him soaring with the hawkling. He shared dreams with the bird already. Her tone, and the wicked look in her eyes, made him feel that at least she believed what she had said. Somehow, she had seen these events. He was sure of it, and it scared him no end.
“The second son of Harrap,” the woman hissed, and her head whipped towards Gerard.
Hyden let his distracting thoughts slip away so that he could better listen to what she had to say about his brother.
“You will journey far and you will learn the truth of love. Often, you will get your way with those around you. You’ll climb to the top of the blackest fang, and you may, or may not, be betrayed there. You will find the power you long for in the depths of those heights, and you will use it to command legions. But that will come later. Sooner, you will want more than you came for, and it will cost you your life. You will die Gerard Skyler, but you will live again. You will die and live again!”
The air around them crackled and popped. The old woman’s face was wrinkled and withered again. She gave Hyden a blank look that might have been full of fear, then began coughing and gasping for breath.
Gerard didn’t notice. He was in a trance brought on by the woman’s strange prophesying and caught up in his own struggling emotions. She started to gag and was turning purple. The veins in her neck and forehead stood out like earthworms. Even though it was happening right in front of him, it wasn’t registering in Gerard’s mind. He seemed to have his eyes locked onto the empty space where the crone had just been.
Hyden looked around the tent for a skin of water, or a flask, but he didn’t see anything. He was starting to panic. The woman was choking to death right there in front of them. The telling of the two fortunes had apparently drained the life right out of her.
Wheezing and hacking, she grasped at her throat desperately. She tried to rise to her feet, but ended up falling on Gerard. He pushed her away hard, as if she were on fire, or contagious. She rolled across the flaming candles and the bloody bones on the floor, and then coughed out harshly one last time. Her body extinguished the flames, leaving the tent in darkness. Her breathing filled the sudden silence, ragged, wet, and harsh, but steady nonetheless.
“Leave me,” she croaked.
Her words were wasted. Gerard was already throwing open the tent flap and Hyden was right on his heels. He stopped, and looked back, to make sure that there wasn’t a fire, but he wasn’t lingering. By the light of the lantern poles along the Way, he saw that there was blood, bones, and globs of candle wax stuck to her robes, but she was struggling to rise to her feet. Satisfied, he hurried to catch up to his fleeing brother. He felt guilty leaving her in that condition, but she had told them to go. Who was he to argue with a demon witch?
Trying very hard to put what had just happened out of his mind, Hyden gained Gerard’s side. He saw that his brother was just as troubled by the ordeal, but Gerard’s expression showed more anger than confusion.
“Are you all right?” Hyden asked.
Gerard started to dismiss the question, but changed his mind.
“I felt…No, I saw her…Shaella, betraying me in a cavern.” He unconsciously covered his ring with his left hand.
Hyden noticed the protective gesture, but ignored it. He wanted to say that the crone had said that he may or may not be betrayed, but he held his tongue. He could tell that Gerard was confused and searching for words.
Gerard was searching for words all right, but not in the way Hyden suspected. He was trying to sort through all the strange visions he had seen in his mind’s eye, especially the ones that he wouldn’t dare tell Hyden about. He had envisioned dark and powerful things that he would never speak about to anyone, sinister and malignant things, that he might someday have control over. The idea of it was intoxicating and he liked it.
“I’ll be going with Shaella,” Gerard finally said. “When they leave the festival for the marshes, I’m going with them.”
The conviction with which he spoke left little room for argument, so Hyden didn’t bother. He wasn’t sure he wanted to dissuade Gerard from his adventure anyway. The fortune-teller had spoken of great power and of commanding legions. How could Gerard not want to seek out his destiny with the beautiful swordswoman Shaella? As with his own prophetic glimpses, he was sure that there were a lot of truths to what had been predicted for Gerard. Some were obvious. He had already begun using the ring to get his way with the people around him, and he was already considering a journey to a black formation that supposedly resembled a fang.
“Do you want to go with me to the Brawl?” Hyden asked, even though the idea of watching two men beat the hell out of each other somehow seemed a little less exciting after hearing the old woman’s grand prophecies.
To Hyden’s surprise, Gerard lit up at the suggestion.
“Yes! Let’s go. Bludgeon, the Seaward Monster, is in the group going with Shaella to the marshes!”
Gerard had instantly changed back into the little brother Hyden loved so much. His excitement was contagious, and he picked up the pace as he spoke.
“He is huge Hyden! His arms are as big as your waist, and his legs are like tree trunks. He’s covered in tattoos, like that fire breathing guy we saw earlier, but without all the red paint.”
“Lord Gregory, the Westland Lion, is pretty big himself,” Hyden said. He had watched the Lion Lord destroy the Valleyan Stallion a few years ago. Bludgeon would have to be good to win against him.
“My money is all on Bludgeon,” Gerard said, with a devilish grin on his face. “I already wagered most of my profit on him, all but a few golden lions.”
“I hope he wins,” Hyden said, wondering why his brother would do such a thing with so much money.
Every year, the Brawl drew a massive crowd, and this year was no exception. The fighting grounds, where the combatants would actually battle, was a circle about thirty feet across. Its boundaries were marked with a rope line, and the area was illuminated from overhead by dozens of lanterns dangling from poles planted into the ground. It was the largest open space the eye could see. Men crowded its edges, buying and selling betting tickets, gold for the Western Lion Lord, and blue for the Seaward Monster. A dozen or more of Wildermont’s most intimidating Redwolf guards worked the perimeter of the fighting circle, trying to keep order where there was none. They were extremely busy. The fight was scheduled to start soon, and everyone was jostling and screaming, trying to get a last minute wager put in.
A slight, natural hill rose up and away from the ring, thus creating a sort of riser for some of the spectators. Some enterprising young men had also built wooden scaffold stands around the rest of the area. They offered tiered seats above the heads of the rest of the crowd. Seats on these platforms sold for three times the cost of a regular spot. It was from one of these structures that Hyden and Gerard were looking down at the fighting circle. The view they had was one of the best available. Hyden had paid the handsome bit of coin to treat his brother to this, and both were extremely excited and pleased with their vantage point.
All thoughts of the future and the past were lost for the moment. Hyden had all but forgotten his archery competition, and Gerard was thinking about the fight, instead of how he would explain to his father that he wasn’t going back to the clan’s village when the festival was over. Now, it was time for the Brawl.
Trumpets were sounding in the distance, and there was a snakelike procession of torch bearers that were weaving their way through the darkened crowd towards the lighted ring. As the parade grew closer, it became clear that it was the Westland Lord and his entourage. The banner they were flying was raised so much higher than the torches they carried, that just a hint of its golden field flashed here and there. Every now and again, the triangular pennant would catch the light just right, to reveal the reared and roaring lion silhouetted on it. Men cheered, and reached out to pat the Westland Lord on his huge back as he passed. Some booed and heckled, and some raised their fists and shouted encouragement. By the time he reached the roped fighting circle, a chant was resounding through the crowd, “
LI-ON
LORD!
LI-ON
LORD!
LI-ON
LORD!” The sound, and intensity of the voices, increased tenfold when the banner man ran around the lighted circle, waving the Westland banner back and forth crazily.
It became obvious to the boys that the amount people from the huge Kingdom of Westland far outnumbered those from the smaller, eastern kingdoms. The boys didn’t know it, but Westland by itself, was nearly as big as all five of the eastern kingdoms combined. Hyden had already decided that he would buy a map of the realm later. He had seen a map maker hawking maps of the recognized kingdoms while he had been searching for Gerard earlier on the Ways. He wanted to have some idea where Gerard was going, and where Shaella’s home, the Kingdom of Dakahn, was. He knew both places were far to the south, but that wasn’t enough information to satisfy his curiosity. He hoped that someday Berda would show him on the map where all the places she’d told him about were.
A loud, groaning crack resounded through the night, silencing all that heard it in an instant. A good portion of the crowd were still obliviously chanting, but those closer to the brightly lit fighting ring, were hushed, and staring at one of the scaffold stands with wide eyes and open mouths. Another crack, followed by a long series of crunching noises quieted the rest of the crowd. Fingers pointed at the particular bleacher as it lurched a few degrees to the side, and then stopped. Screams filled the night when the bleacher fell a little bit farther. The people sitting on it began scrambling down in a mad rush. Some leapt into the throng of people below, some clung to the splintering wood with all they had. It was total chaos. Both Hyden and Gerard watched the whole scene in utter disbelief. More than once, Hyden shook himself in place to check the sturdiness of the structure they were sitting on. It felt good and rigid, unlike the one they were watching. Instead of leaning further over to the side, the whole structure suddenly tumbled straight down upon itself. The massive crowd all watched the madness in stunned silence. A handful of people got caught under the platform when it fell. Dozens were injured, and a few were even killed.
Again, Hyden tried to rock the scaffolding that they were sitting on. It was sturdy as far as he could tell. Gerard hit him in the arm to get his attention.
“Look!”
A great gout of fire jetted up into the sky in the distance, and suddenly the sound of drums filled the silence. It was a feverish beat, deep and solid, and it was being pounded out over the gasps and screams of the crowd. The fallen structure, and the injured people beneath it, was seemingly forgotten. The Seaward Monster was coming to the battlegrounds.
As with Lord Gregory’s entrance, a long string of torches was weaving towards the circle, but every few moments, fire blasted skyward, lighting the huge combatant, and the four, red painted fire breathers who we’re taking turns exhaling the flames before him. In the bright explosions of light, the rectangular Seaward Kingdom banner, an orange sun rising from a blue sea, reflected clearly and proudly, and a new chant began to form to the rhythmic beat of the drummers.
“
EAST-ERN
BEAST!
EAST-ERN
BEAST!
EAST-ERN
BEAST!” This mantra slowly, but steadily, overtook the Lion Lord’s chant, as the other eastern kingdom folk, from Valleya, Dakahn, Wildermont, and Highwander all joined in.
The event was turning into an East versus West grudge battle, which brought the intensity level of the crowd up to a fevered pitch. The betting became furious. The eastern kingdoms, well known for their constant squabbling amongst each other over borders, trade tariffs, and river crossing rights, pushed their differences to the side for the moment to cheer on the Seaward fighter. Nearly all of the people from the eastern kingdoms wanted to see the overbearing Kingdom of Westland’s favorite fighter go down.
By the time Bludgeon stepped into the circle, the chant for him was completely drowning out the voices of the people still cheering for Lord Gregory. Two of the red and black painted fire breathers, sent up simultaneous pillars of flame for the monster to pass between as he entered the fighting circle. The crowd exploded into screams and cheers. The people that had fallen with the scaffolding were long forgotten as the two brawlers paced around the fighting circle, flexing and stretching their massive muscles.
Bludgeon was a bit larger than Lord Gregory, Hyden saw, but the Valleyan Stallion had been bigger too. Hyden had been planning to root for the Lion Lord, until he learned about Gerard’s foolish bet. If Gerard lost his wager, his entire harvest this year, and the risk of making it, would’ve been for nothing. The idea of risking that much coin on a gamble disturbed Hyden. He could see betting enough to make the fight more exciting, but the amount Gerard had wagered was extreme. He found himself wanting the giant tattoo covered Seawardsman to win, just so that Gerard didn’t lose all of his money. He glanced at his brother. Gerard was on the edge of his seat with excitement radiating from him like heat from a forge fire. It made Hyden smile despite his concern over Gerard’s purse.
“I hope you win!” Hyden yelled, but Gerard didn’t hear him.
Hyden looked back to the fighting circle, and saw why Gerard wasn’t paying any attention to him. Shaella was down there among the fire breathers, wearing a hooded cloak that didn’t quite conceal the bulge of her sword hilt, or the swell of her ample bosom. She threw the hood back, and her face was the most beautiful thing visible in the entire crowd. She spoke a few words to Bludgeon, and then she was pulled out of the roped off area by another tattoo covered Seawardsman, just before the Wildermont Redwolf soldiers began clearing the circle for the Brawl.